Unteachable

by Leah Raeder

  “Come here.”

  “I think we should see a marriage counselor.”

  “Maise, come here.”

  My heart skipped. I sat beside him, our backs to the brick wall. In the darkness the loft reverted to a factory, mysterious machines hulking all around us, sitting in abandoned silence. The sadness of factories, I thought. Once upon a time they’d made things. Now they were all slowly decaying, like used-up mothers. My eyes traced the maze of pipes and beams that made up the ceiling, all the messy guts shoved together. Evan put his arm around me. I felt the contours of his muscle and bone through my shirt, the hard lines of this body I had taken into mine.

  “Are you scared?” he said into my hair.

  “Yeah.”

  “What scares you?”

  I kept my eyes on the ceiling. “That this is too good. That it won’t last. That you’ll leave.”

  Fingertips ran up the smooth plane of my thigh. Goosebumps, everywhere.

  “And you?” I said.

  “Same exact thing, but about you.”

  I turned to him. That boyish face, scruffy with stubble, almost like two different people looking at me. He wasn’t perfect. His lips were a touch too full, too sulky, his forehead a little too tall, and there was a permanent trace of mourning stamped into his features that sometimes made him look helpless, but all his imperfections fit him perfectly. I adore this face, I thought. How is it possible he’s scared of losing me? Never in my life had I considered I might be something someone worried about losing.

  “Statistically,” I said, “we’re doomed, you know.”

  “Statistically, everyone is doomed.”

  “Right, but we are specifically doomed. Wesleypedia told me that at the beginning of a relationship, your brain releases tons of dopamine. You literally make yourself high. But after a few months it stops, and then you’re basically going through withdrawal while trying to figure out why you’re in bed with this person and sharing germs.”

  Evan wore a rueful smile. “What made you so grim?”

  Life, I thought.

  His hand moved up the back of my knee to the inside of my thigh. He looked at my face as he touched me, watching each layer of irony and cynicism splinter, crack, fall away. I didn’t move. I let every cord in me tighten, slowly pulling into a knot in my center. I was so finely-tuned I felt my nipples graze my shirt as I breathed, the hair on his arm tickling my thigh. He pushed my legs apart and I bit my lip.

  “Look at me,” he said.

  I did.

  His voice was soft and gritty. “This is what I think about in class.”

  His fingers rose to the crease of my thigh. He dragged a nail along the edge of my underwear, and I shivered and couldn’t stop, as if a low electric current ran through me. He didn’t touch me directly, but traced every boundary until I couldn’t sit still. My mouth was open, my breath spilling wildly. All the electricity in me surged to predict where his fingertips would brush, like one of those glass balls full of plasma that shoots to the surface when a hand gets near. Every subtle shift of fabric was unbearable. My skin was too hot, too ripe with blood, a summer creature full of too much life and lust and desperately in need of release.

  “Please,” I said.

  His hand spread across my thigh and squeezed. “I think about you saying that, too.”

  My breath was still out of control, but I said, “And what else?”

  “I think about undressing you.”

  I leaned forward and shrugged out of my T-shirt. My body felt elastic and sinuous, like a snake. His hand ran up my belly, between my breasts, never quite touching the places I ached to be touched.

  “I think about your skin,” he said, his thumb moving over my collarbone. “Your mouth.” He opened it, put his index finger between my teeth. “The inside of you.”

  I closed my lips over his finger, looking at him. I felt so womanish, suddenly. You think you’re the one corrupting me, I thought, but I’m fucking you up, too. My eyelids lowered. The power was all mine now. I took him deeper, almost to the knuckle, curling my tongue around his finger, scraping my teeth over it lightly as he withdrew. When he pulled away I took him into my mouth again. He groaned. So I did it again, and again, enthralled at how his body responded, leaning closer, softening, giving itself up to me. God, it felt so good, having all the power. I could get used to being the teacher.

  He pulled out finally and pressed his face to my shoulder. “What are you doing to me?” he said, his voice far away. “This is all I think about. I’m obsessed.”

  I swallowed. I could still taste his skin, clean and warm and faintly salty. I put my arms around him, and we lay down together, and were lost in each other until morning.

  #

  The day was half gone when I woke. Evan was up already, working on school stuff. He called me sleepyhead and kissed me and sat on the bed to watch me dress. Funny, how even clothes going on my body was absolutely mesmerizing to him.

  We walked around the neighborhood in search of food. The city looked like an old-time photograph tinted the colors of coins, silver and nickel, its edges blurred with mist. Headlights made bright lighthouse beacons in the fog. We walked close and slow, arms around each other’s waists. Trees still saturated with rain from last night seemed to glow a hyper-pigmented green. The streets were full of a dizzying brew of wet concrete and brick and asphalt. On one side of my body, Evan’s heat; on the other, the cool lick of rain-dampened air.

  We bought coffee and almond croissants at a cafe and sat on the patio, watching the world flow past.

  “I got you something,” Evan said.

  He took his hand from his pocket, something small and shiny in his fingers.

  My body went into slow-motion. I looked up at him slowly, breathed slowly, felt the long, slow strokes of my heart ticking like a close-up clock in a movie.

  “I was going to give it to you yesterday,” he said, eyes lowered, “but the timing wasn’t right.” He turned the ring in his fingers. “I keep pretending I’m okay, looking at you in class and playing Mr. Good Teacher, when all I want to do is take you in my arms. And I wanted you to know that even though we have to do this, the hiding and pretending, there’s not a moment that goes by when I’m not thinking of you, wishing it was different. So I thought maybe this would remind you. That this could hold you when I couldn’t.”

  He finally raised his eyes. He looked so young right then.

  “Do you know how to wear this?” he said.

  I laughed, part disbelief, part giddy wonder. “I’m fucking Irish, Evan. Of course I know.”

  He smiled. He knew I did.

  It was a silver Claddagh ring: two hands clasping a heart with a crown atop it. Every part of it was symbolic: the heart stood for love; the hands, friendship; the crown, loyalty. Depending on how you wore it, it meant different things. On your left hand, heart pointing out, it meant you were engaged; heart in, married. On your right hand, heart out meant you were looking for love; heart in, you were in love.

  He held the ring out to me, and I took it, swallowing. My skin flashed hot and cold at the same time. This, I thought, is going to become a memory: the way I’m shivering but so warm inside, the way the sky is trembling above us, threatening rain, and the way your eyes are bluer than I’ve ever seen. I slid the ring onto my right ring finger, its heart pointing inward, toward mine.

  Our gazes met across the table. There were a million things I wanted to say at the same time, so I said nothing.

  Evan opened his mouth.

  A huge stiletto of rain hit the table, splashing onto my half-eaten croissant.

  “Oh, shit,” I said.

  In three seconds flat, it was pouring.

  I was so surprised and happy and overwhelmed by everything, the whole weekend, the craziness of my life, the ring on my finger, that I stood up and shrieked, joyously. Evan tried to save the food, but it was destroyed in moments. We took off running down the block, him laughing and me still screaming happi
ly, like a kid. I was drenched and blissful and ran across a street where a car sat at the red light, and kissed my hand and slapped it on the hood. The driver gave me a funny little frown and I beamed at her. I fucking love you, lady, I thought. I love this entire world and everyone in it.

  We reached the old factory building completely out of breath, our hair plastered to our skulls, clothes heavy as iron with water. Evan started to unlock the door and I snatched the keys away and he pushed me against the door, kissing me. A wild, rough, messy kiss that tasted like rainwater and rust. It was elemental, a force as raw as the one that tore the sky apart over us. We went in finally but stopped outside the elevator, and he lifted me under the legs and held me against the wall, kissing me viciously, his tongue thrusting hard into my mouth. Rain darkened his hair from gold to brown. I ran my hands beneath his wet shirt, his skin searing. I would have fucked him right there. I didn’t care. But we got on the elevator, and it took forever to get to the loft because we stood there with the door open, kissing madly. I took his shirt off and dropped it. He took off my shorts. We left our shoes and socks strewn across the hallway. My bra at the front door. His jeans and everything else on the stairs up to the bathroom.

  My skin was clammy, hair stringy, and I turned on the shower, but we didn’t get that far. He lifted me onto the bathroom counter, my ass on the freezing tile, and I decided that that was far enough. That was where I wanted to be fucked. I wrapped my hand around the back of his neck, the ring cool against his burning skin. He didn’t stop for a condom and when he entered me the heat was a shock. I leaned back, arching my spine. In the harsh halogen lights his body looked carved out of stone, his skin polished with rain and sweat, every muscle rigid. We hadn’t fucked in a week and the tension was insane. The veins in his arms stood out. My own body felt hard and brutal, my breasts bouncing every time he thrust into me, and it didn’t feel so much like sex as smashing my nerves with a hammer, blunt and savage, primitive. He held my hips and fucked me roughly and fast and I felt a heavy wave of lava surging up my thighs and could not. Hold on. To myself. And I said, “Please, come. Please, please, come in me.”

  His hands tightened, painfully, and he pulled out and clutched my body to his, gasping.

  I stared at the wall behind him, bewildered.

  “Evan?” I whispered.

  His body heaved against me, frantic, breathless.

  I pulled back, trying to look at his face. His head was down. He wouldn’t let go of me, wouldn’t look at me.

  “Evan,” I said again, my voice sharper than I’d intended. I’d been so close to coming, and after the week of no sex, I couldn’t help my frustration. “What’s wrong?”

  “I’m so sorry,” he said.

  I managed to lever him away so I could look at him. My skin was flushed, tight as a drumhead. He was still hard but his face was pained. God, what the fuck? So awkward. So fucking awkward.

  “You can’t keep doing this,” I said. “Tell me why it freaks you out so much.”

  He winced at my words, turned his head away. Please, I thought. Don’t be like this. Don’t be another high school boy who can’t handle his own feelings. You’re supposed to be a grown man.

  He leaned against the wall. Raked a hand through his hair, propped his forehead in his palm. We looked like two crazy people, naked and covered in rain and sweat. I slapped my hand down on the counter and the ring rapped loudly, startling us both, making us look at each other.

  “Talk to me,” I said, gentler now.

  “I am terrified for you,” he said. His voice was low and hoarse.

  “Why?”

  “Because I don’t ever want to put your future at risk. Even in the slightest way.”

  I sighed, my tension uncoiling. “I won’t let that happen. I’m not careless, you know that. I’m going to college, and I’m going to get a real job, and I’m not even going to think about having a family until I’m like, thirty.” I looked him full in the face, willing him to understand. “I’ve had to take care of myself most of my life, and I won’t let that go to waste by getting knocked up at eighteen. So you don’t need to safeguard my future. I’ve got it covered.”

  The anxiety drained from him. He looked defeated, embarrassed. “Here I thought I was being responsible, but you’re way ahead of me.”

  “Well, it means a lot, that you care about my future.” I raised my hand. “Come over here and be awkward with me.”

  He did, wrapping his arms around me, sighing. He’d gone soft, and the edge of my frustration had dulled. This was just an embrace, tender, tired. I rubbed my finger over the silver band.

  “You gave me a ring,” I said.

  “I did.”

  I leaned back, a small, cocky smile on my face. “Who else have you given a ring?”

  “No one.”

  “Not even your fiancée?”

  He shook his head. “Broke up before we went ring shopping.”

  I stared at him, my heart beating fast. “I’m the first?”

  He put his hands to either side of my face. His eyelashes were matted, sparkling with water. He looked like a little boy who’d been playing in the rain. “You’re the first. You’re the first of so many things.”

  My gaze shifted from his eyes to his mouth, his lips red and full, and I kissed him, delicately, like a little girl kissing a little boy. It was all lightness, softness. His hands drifted airily over my back. I pressed myself against him as if I weighed nothing, as if we floated underwater. None of the savagery of earlier. But somehow that tenderness grew and he hardened against me and I took him inside without my breath or pulse changing at all, as if this was no different from that. I wrapped my legs around his waist. He kissed me as he moved inside of me, his eyes closed, his eyebrows raised in bliss. I was still a little numb but something gentle and sweet collected in my belly, a warm rain building up. Both of us got close to coming, and looked at each other, and didn’t say anything, and when I let my eyes roll back and all my being condense to the line of pure heaven shooting up my spinal cord, he came, too, cupping my body against himself like something precious, breathing his rapture in my ear.

  He held me like that for a while. Eventually I felt the counter again, the cool imprint of tile. There was a whole world full of ticking clocks and calendar days out there. I kissed Evan’s shoulder, his neck, his throat flecked with fine stubble, drinking in the smell of him. He straightened and pulled out and the soft hot rush of wetness between my legs made my heart stammer. This was completely, completely real.

  He stroked my jaw, giving me a sleepy smile.

  Something went very tight and sharp in my chest. God, this is happening, I thought. You’re taking over my heart and I can’t stop it. I don’t want to.

  “Will you tell me why?” he said.

  “Why what?”

  “Why you were so insistent.”

  I ran my hand over the downy hair on his belly and up to the place above his heart. I listened to it beating through my skin. “Because I want all of you,” I said. “Every part.”

  He whispered back, “It’s yours.”

  #

  Evan decided my film education should work backwards from when I was born, going through movies decade by decade.

  First up: the 1980s.

  “I can’t believe I was a little kid watching this shit,” he said as we sat down with The Lost Boys. The Friend had a huge, expensive TV, and we’d made popcorn and drinks and everything. Legit date night. “This whole decade was so dark. Everything now is safe and colorful and sanitized. Everyone’s scared of giving kids psychological scars.”

  “That’s not true,” I said. “I grew up with the internet pumping filth into my brain.”

  He laughed. “Good point.”

  I saw what he meant about the darkness. Even in a campy vampire film full of mullets and feathered hair, there was an undertone of ugly, almost chthonic horror. Not the ultra-real yet somehow ultra-clean gore of the Saw generation. This was a sleazy, leerin
g, scummy feeling, a glimpse of a time when adults weren’t so terrified of terrifying kids. There was something refreshing about it. Life without the shrinkwrap.

  As I sat there with his arm around me, his easy laugh in my ear, I thought, How different are we? We came from such different times, his era murky and analog, mine bright and digital, and yet we got each other’s jokes, had a similar way of looking at the absurdity of the world and laughing. How much of it was real, and how much the chemical honeymoon my brain was on? I twisted the ring on my finger.

  Next up was The Breakfast Club. I fell in love with it immediately. The cheesy 80s clothes, Molly Ringwald and a hot young Emilio Estevez, the razor-sharp dialogue, everything. Change the clothes and hair and add cell phones and you had any modern high school.

  “Oh my god,” I said when it was over. “I’m Allison.”

  “You’re a compulsive liar?” Evan said.

  “No, I’m a total weirdo. But maybe I’m lying about that.”

  “I had the biggest crush on Ally Sheedy.”

  I grinned. “Which one were you, in high school?”

  “Guess.”

  “The bad boy.”

  “Nope.”

  “The jock?”

  “Nope.”

  I frowned. “The nerd?”

  “Is that such a shock?”

  I climbed across his lap, pushing him back against the couch. Popcorn spilled out of the bowl beside us.

  “No,” I said, wrapping my hands in his shirt. “It’s fucking hot.”

  He smiled that perfect Hollywood smile and gave me a drowsy, knowing look, all smoky desire, and we had sex again right there on the couch, using a condom out of consideration for The Friend, my knees sinking into the cushion, my head thrown back and Evan gazing up at me, entranced. This is mine, I thought as he fucked me. This body, this act, this man, all mine. This belongs to my heart and my skin and no one can take it from me because it is etched there, indelibly. I came hard and stayed atop him, my hands on his shoulders, a woman in total control. When we stood up afterward I saw the silhouette of our bodies in sweat on the dark brown leather, evaporating in the chill.